Saturday, June 6th, 2020

Saint Norbert is known for studding the face of Europe with monasteries: but he was not always so saintly. Already made a subdeacon and canon, Norbert, as his life tells us, “allowed himself to be so carried away by pleasure that nothing short of a miracle of grace could make him lead the life of an earnest cleric. One day, while riding to Vreden, a village near Xanten, he was overtaken by a storm. A thunderbolt fell at his horse's feet; the frightened animal threw its rider, and for nearly an hour he lay like one dead.” What do you do in that situation? Norbert made a choice: he needed to stop living as he was, and started living like a Christian. Changed History, and a transformed Europe, were the results.